


Incense

by naye



Category: One Piece
Genre: Gen, Minor Canonical Character(s), Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-29
Updated: 2014-11-29
Packaged: 2018-02-27 10:22:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2689280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naye/pseuds/naye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Law is not the only one who mourns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Incense

**Author's Note:**

> Set after manga chapter 767.

It isn't until she buries her face in her pillow and feels a lump dig into her cheek that Baby 5 remembers they're there. Her breath catches again, and before she can stop herself she's clutching a crumpled pack of cigarettes and there's a pit in her stomach where anger should be.

She doesn't pull them out, doesn't look at them, only closes her fist more tightly around the flimsy cardboard. Her nose is half buried in the finest stolen linen, but she can still smell a wisp of tobacco. It's all it takes to make his presence as vivid as if his tall shadow were falling across her. As if she could turn around and see not her empty cabin, but gratitude sparkling behind a silent smirk.

Always clumsy, always forgetful - every time she brings him his cigarettes he smiles.

She brought them for him this time too. He left his cigarettes, as he left without saying goodbye, and Baby 5 found them up and stashed them away and waited for their reunion. She would think of them sometimes, and imagine that he would laugh his silent laugh as she offered them back and maybe lit one carefully for him. She knows how, and she does it without even meaning to prank him sometimes, knowing how to keep the flame away from all of his trailing loose ends and flailing limbs.

And he was supposed to smile.

He wasn't supposed to--

She still has his cigarettes. And she's not supposed to think about Co-- about the traitor, but she still has his cigarettes and now he won't be needing them anymore.

Baby 5 tries to make the thought vicious, tries to gather her feelings like a firebrand and cauterize his memory, but the only heat she feels is that of tears prickling her eyelids.

She was going to bring them back to him, and he was going to smile, and now her fist is clenched around the cigarettes that are going to go to waste because nobody on this stupid ship needs them anymore. ( _We don't need an extra mouth to feed_ echoes deep under the new hurt. _We don't need some weak little girl_.) So she'll have to throw them away, she'll have to leave them behind like so much rubbish, like so much unwanted baggage left behind in the snow like--

No.

No, she doesn't have to throw his cigarettes away. Her fingers relax their vicious grip, and she lies there just feeling the pack in her hand, crinkled cardboard warm under the weight of the pillow. Imagines nothing but the smell of smoke, safe and familiar. The whole pack, cigarette after cigarette rising in pale curls to the sky - fulfilling their purpose.

Baby 5 understands about the importance of having a purpose. She doesn't smile, but a little bit of the North Blue chill seeps from her bones and dampens her pillow as she pulls the box from under her pillow and keeps breathing in deep. He'll get them back, at least.

She can still do that much for him.


End file.
